


Note to Self: Don't be Gay in Derry, Maine

by geicogecko



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: Audra Phillips is kind of a bitch tbh but she's gonna get better, Bad Parents Maggie Tozier & Wentworth Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, F/F, F/M, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, LOOK I hate it as much as you do but it's IMPORTANT for the AU and they're really not in it, Lesbian Richie and Eddie, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Similar plot Very Different characters, Stan and Patty are basically Richie's gay moms, The Prom AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geicogecko/pseuds/geicogecko
Summary: Richie Tozier's year isn't going great.She had been kicked out, earned the title of "most hated person" in her homophobic small town, and, worst of all, had accidentally gotten prom cancelled.Just when she thinks things can't get worse, four failing Broadway preformers break into her high school, a publicity stunt centered entirely around Richie and injustice and attention she hadn't wanted to get.Really, all Richie had wanted was a chance to dance with her girlfriend.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Note to Self: Don't be Gay in Derry, Maine

**🍝💖 (9:57 PM)-** _ My mom is about to steal my phone gn I love you!! It’ll be okay!!! <3 _

Richie stares hard at her phone, head buried under the covers like it will block out the watery pink of the sunrise filtering through her blinds and the impending stomach-aching awareness that any minute her alarm was going to go off and she’d need to face  _ life _ again.

_ Life _ was not going to be pleasant and Richie knew she wasn’t prepared for it. She honestly didn’t think she  _ could _ be prepared for whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t the kind of thing you  _ prepare for. _

But, she’s intentionally choosing to work under the belief that if she closes her eyes and pretends hard enough, maybe she can convince herself that everything is going to go back to life as usual. She’ll go to school fifteen minutes early so she can meet Eddie behind the bleachers, ten uninterrupted minutes to make out and pretend they’re normal teenagers before they need to stagger their exits and get to class as inconspicuously separated as possible, she’ll sit through boring classes, she’ll tell a joke that makes her classmates laugh and the teacher threaten her with detention, she’ll go to rehearsal, and when all that's over maybe she’ll sit behind the fence that circles the track and watch them practice, if anyone asks why she can just say she’s bored and waiting to be picked up and no one will think anything of it.

Fine and average and perfectly boring. 

Except she  _ can’t _ watch track practice, not without someone going to the school board and crying ‘perverted lesbian’, it’s the same reason she has no rehearsal to go to, because no one wanted her in the girls dressing room anymore. Classes are going to be shit, because none of her classmates want her there, and it doesn’t matter how early she gets to school, making out with Eddie under the bleachers isn’t going to happen any more, not if she doesn’t want to risk putting a target the size of Maine on the back of Derry High’s golden girl.

She just wants to _talk_ to her,  _ needs  _ the reassurance that she’ll at least have one person on her side at school even though she can’t show it, but she knows she can’t text first to try and get that, not unless she knows it's safe. Eddie's mother is so overbearing that she has to literally delete Richie’s contact every night to keep her from finding out when she looks through her phone, and if Sonia sees a text from Richie for Eddie things won't be pretty. 

But that's okay, because Eddie said she loved her and if Richie squeezes her eyes shut hard enough she can pretend that will be enough to get her through what today is actually going to bring. (It’s not, thinking like that is almost as ridiculous as pretending everything is going to be fine.)

The alarm goes off and her stomach drops until it's somewhere around her ankles, she burrows deeper under the covers, face pressed against the blanket so hard she’s certain it will leave an imprint as she tries to force herself to become one with the fabric. Blankets don’t have to go to school.

After what could be an hour but is probably only a few minutes, her heart is hammering too hard in her ears to really tell, the bed next to her dips and someone’s hand finds its way under the blanket to card through her hair.

“Hey, Rich, Patty made waffles if you’re planning on coming out of hibernation anytime soon.”

“Tell her I love her but I’ll puke.” She grumbles into the mattress and Stan huffs out a sympathetic laugh, tugging the blanket off her face with little trouble and poking her cheek somewhat fondly to try and make her smile. Richie tilts up the corners of her lips pathetically like a consolation prize but Stan doesn’t seem to buy it. S he scoots up against the headboard of her bed, holding her arms open and letting Richie flop face first into her stomach.

“Look, I’m not going to lie and say everything will be great, because you’re smarter than that, it’s going to fucking suck, but  _ you’re _ going to be okay.” Richie groans as long as she can into Stan’s sweater, she's always found something comforting in being slightly dramatic, and Stan seems to concede to that fact that it’s warranted, at least this time, by not teasing her for it. She wraps her arms tightly around Stan's waist, some small deluded part of her crying out that if she just doesn’t let go then maybe she can stay here forever and never need to go outside and face the world again.

“I’m  _ not _ going to be okay, Stan. Everyone already fucking hates me for being a goddamn  _ dyke _ and now I’m the dyke that got  _ prom cancelled!” _

That's really what it boils down to, everyone can add as many bells and whistles and fine print guidelines in the student hand book as they want to but the basic of the story was that Richie had tried to ask her girlfriend to prom, someone had found out and leaked it to the student body, who then leaked it to their bible thumping, homophobic PTA board parents, who had resolutley banned  _ her  _ from prom. 

Which had sparked national outrage. 

Which had gotten her and her dumb fucking sophmore yearbook picture, all bright blue braces bands and frizzy braids and a hawaiian shirt that had gotten her bullied  _ before _ everyone knew her dirty little secret, plastered across every social media platform and news outlet throughout the country until a week ago when the PTA had a meeting about the backlash that ended with them cancelling prom all together. 

It wasn’t what she had wanted, it hadn’t  _ helped _ anyone, all it had done was force poor Patty to find her crammed between the sink and the toilet, chest heaving with an out of control, over stimulated panic attack as her phone  _ ding ding dinged  _ with reporters trying to get an interview and thousands of strangers tagging her in their preformative outrage on instagram and her classmates sending her insults and horrible pictures and  _ death threats.  _

All because she wanted to take her girlfriend to prom like a normal teenager. 

She should have known, normal and Rachel Tozier haven’t stuck together since third grade when she’d started demanding that everyone called her Richie, crying until it stuck and then crying when people teased her for it.

“I know this doesn’t help but prom sucks.” That's almost the biggest problem, Richie thinks, that prom sucks. 

Prom is a universally shitty, expensive experience so why does everyone  _ care  _ so much about who she’s taking? It’s always terrible, but that's what she  _ wants, _ she wants corny, cheesy slow dances, she wants to spill dollar-store-vodka spiked punch across her too pricey dress all as a ploy to get her girlfriend to wrap the cardigan her mom will probably make her bring around her shoulders, she wants cheap streamers and easily poppable balloons and horrible music. She wants to do that all with Eddie and she doesn’t get what's so  _ wrong _ about that.

“You’re right, that doesn’t help.” Stan chuckles, awkwardly maneuvering her hand under her chin and tilting her head up so she can look at her, face suddenly serious.

“You don’t need to go today, it’s okay if you’re scared, I’ll call you out.” Richie appreciates it, appreciates how warm and cared for it all makes her feel, but they both know it’s not true. She had already missed a week of classes waiting for everything to die down (it hasn’t) or waiting for Derry, Maine to get the stick out of it’s ass and stop harassing her (it won’t) and if she misses any more the same adults who ruined her life will get her in trouble. 

She can’t keep hiding out, no matter how much she’d like to.

“It’s okay.” She sounds smaller than she likes to and Stan’s expression melts into something softer as she rubs her thumb across her cheek, it’s silent and gentle but it’s more reassuring than Richie thinks she knows.

“Come on, get ready, Patty said she’ll drive you on her way to work,” She untangles herself from Richie’s long limbed prison, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before heading out, stopping with her hand hovering above the door handle, “Call me if someone fucks with you, actually, no, call Pat, she’s better at punching people.” 

Richie snorts, her first real smile of the morning cracking across her face as she nods her assent, dismissing Stan by nose diving into her pillow. Thank fucking Christ for Stan Uris and Patty Blum, she doesn't really know what she would do without them, not only becuase they've been letting her live in their apartment, but also because they both seem to have the rare gift of being able to easily talk her off the ledge.

(Stan had been a family friend, seven years older and the kind of cool, teenage not-cousin at family get togethers you trail after like a lost puppy when you're little because you have nothing better to do. Richie had been obnoxious at the time, she’s sure, but eventually they’d managed to form a shaky common ground that resulted in ‘almost friendship’, at least at all the boring family get togethers they were forced to attend . 

Around the time Stan turned eighteen and left for college she stopped coming to barbecues and parties and the awkward, less-than-fun family friend vacations, her parents still came but whenever Richie asked them where Stan was they scrunched up their faces unpleasantly and informed her that ‘she will no longer be attending events with them’. 

After three years of the furious sort of betrayal only middle schoolers can maintain for quite that long, she found out exactly  _ why _ she’d been abandoned by her favorite ‘almost cousin sort of friend’. It had been a complicated process, slowly putting puzzle pieces together through several vicious rounds of social media stalking and one masterful display eavesdropping on her parent’s after dinner conversation (Stan needed her teeth cleaned and Wentworth Tozier was one of the only affordable dentists in the area, a fact that had Richie dreading the next time she got a cavity), but eventually she’d learned that she hadn’t been abandoned at all.

Instead, Stan had been disowned because she had started to date girls.

She lived with her girlfriend, Patricia Blum, in an apartment complex just outside of Derry, though Richie for the life of her couldn’t tell you  _ why, _ the second she turns eighteen she’s moving as far away from this shithole as she possibly can. 

Their place was nice, immaculately clean and well decorated with neatly framed photos and a complicated system of hard-to-open, beautiful-to-look-at storage containers, but most important, it had a guest bedroom that they’d happily let Richie stay in when she’d showed up at their door at the beginning of this whole mess after someone had outed her to her parents, sobbing and gripping hard on the handle of a hastily packed duffle bag like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to the planet.)

Patty pokes her head into the room once she’s up and dressed, grinning wide in a way they both try to convince themselves isn’t forced, she twirls her keys sloppily on her ring finger before tossing them on the bed in front of Richie’s backpack.

“Wanna drive?”

“I’ll crash.” Patty flops herself across the bed, scooping the key ring up and jangling it experimentally above her head before shoving them back into her front pocket.

“Was that a warning or a threat?” Richie gives up trying to tame her hair into something manageable and drops down next to her, she’d spent half the morning agonizing over how to look as ‘out and proud and unaffected by slurs’ as possible while still trying to avoid any and all attention she could; all and all she sort of just looked like a puffy-eyed, scared kid hiding in a too big sweatshirt she’d layered a too big button up over so she could pretend it was all intentional. They were going to eat her alive.

“Both. It was both.” Quite honestly, while intentionally crashing a car to avoid school was absolutely in the cards, Richie was a shitty fucking driver, she may not even need to try.

“Hey, you’re going to be fine! You have that meeting with your principal before school, right? Maybe she’ll clear some things up and everything will be okay!” Patty always managed to maintain a light sort of optimism neither Stan nor Richie completely understood, they liked to write it off on her not growing up in Derry but she seemed convinced they both just derived joy from wallowing, which was fair enough in it’s own right.

“Sure, maybe.” Patty beams down at her, planting a kiss to her forehead and ruffling her hair before forcefully dragging her out of her room and telling her she’ll meet her in the car.

They get to the school half an hour early, the teacher and student lots are almost entirely empty, which would be a god send if the few people she did see didn’t jog away to avoid her or attempt to glare a hole through her head. 

She swallows back her bile, armed with Stan-logic and Patty-optimism and an old text from Eddie that said  _ I love you!! It’ll be okay!!! <3 _ like weak, preformative weapons tucked protectively in her arsenal as she walks into the main office.

Principal Hanlon is waiting for her, face twisted into the ‘I’m a decent adult who feels bad about this traumatic event you're going through’ pity that she’s become startlingly familiar with these past couple of months, not as familiar as the ‘I’m a shitty, homophobic adult who wishes it was legal to hit you with my car’ look, but still.

Dr. Michelle ‘Call-Me-Mike’ Hanlon was one of the few adults who had voted at the PTA meeting to let her attend prom and tried with all her surprisingly feeble power to convince the parents to at least put their witch hunt against a seventeen year old on hold once it became clear there was no actual stopping it. 

That all made her pretty cool in Richie’s eyes, but as she sits uncomfortably in the squeaky red vinyl chair in front of her desk as ‘Call-Me-Mike’ Hanlon informs her that apparently her case is a ‘civil rights issue’ and ‘none of it’s her fault’ and ‘things might be tricky’, Richie sort of hates her. 

She says it all in the same unintentionally condescending tone that most adults have started to use with her recently, like they think she is fully unaware that ruining the most important night of her homophobic, peaking-in-high-school classmate’s lives by being a lesbian is going to fucking suck and that homophobia is bad. 

Of course it’s all going to be shitty, she’s aware,  _ she’s _ the one all the shitty stuff is happening to and it’d be nice if adults would stop making things worse when they tried to help.

They tend to follow it up by telling her to  _ breathe _ and other bullshit advice like that, things that never really help but they like to pretend will so they don’t feel useless.

“Rach- Richie, please come tell me if anyone does anything that makes you feel unsafe, you haven’t done anything wrong and I will take whatever action I need to make sure you get the same education as everyone else.” Principal Hanlon takes one of her hands and squeezes it, it’s probably supposed to be reassuring but it really just feels like an apology for what she’s about to go through. She promises she’ll tell her if she feels threatened. 

They both know she’s lying.

“Oh, there's an assembly last period about everything that's going on, required attendance.” Dr. Hanlon adds hastily through gritted teeth as Richie stands to leave, looking reluctant to even bring it up. Richie lets herself flop back into the chair, not quite willing to wince at the unsettling squeak that her body weight manages to pull from the upholstery.

“Did you… I’m sorry… but you couldn’t have held that assembly sometime in the last fucking  _ week?” _ She considers apologizing for cursing, but she doesn’t think she really should have to right now. The principal gives her a sad look that doesn’t need much explanation and it almost startles her, even though it shouldn’t, even though she knew this, seeing just how little power one of the only adults who doesn’t hate her actually holds over the school district.

“I tried, really I did, but they were insistent you should be there. You won’t need to talk or anything, just, be there. I understand this is all going to be difficult, I’m sorry.” She really does look apologetic, but feeling sorry doesn’t really help when you haven’t done anything very helpful about an assembly that could very well end with someone burning Richie at the PTA funded stake.

“Can I just go? Please.” She manages weakly and Dr. Hanlon hesitates, like she wants to add some other well meaning but clueless platitude, before nodding.

She all but sprints from the office to the gym, ducking behind the bleachers, and nestling comfortably with her backpack hugged against her chest, mind buzzing with worst and best and probable case scenarios. 

Eddie never comes. It’s the first time since they got together at the very end of sophomore year that Eddie hasn’t shown up without telling her first. It’s not that she had expected her to, it’d be sort of stupid if she had shown up, like cuddling up next to a nuclear bomb in plain sight. 

But Richie hadn’t expected it to sting quite so much.

She copes the way she always does when breaking down crying or being hugged weren’t options; she closes her eyes and imagines she’s somewhere else. 

She pretends she’s not hiding out under the Derry High bleachers, probably sitting on top of decades of ABC gum and so many mystery liquids that she’d rather die than bring a black light down here, that instead she’s on some beach in California, right outside of her and Eddie’s first house together, and maybe it’s a little leaky and there is only one bathroom that they bicker over when they want to use the toilet and the other person is taking too long in the shower, but it’s  _ theirs. _

Eddie always has an issue with this fantasy when Richie waxes poetic about it to her, she likes to tell Richie just how dangerous living so close to the ocean would be and gets frustrated that she’s willing to romanticize bad real estate decisions while still insisting that she needs to add Tozier-patented realism.

However, Richie rationalizes a little bitterly, Eddie’s favorite Richie-Future-Fantasy is the one where they live in  _ New York City, _ which Richie refuses to think is any safer than the coast line, and Eddie isn’t even here right now. So they’re going to live in California.

Richie isn’t sure what she’ll be doing, when she was younger she’d like to play around with the idea of being  _ famous,  _ sometimes she’d be an actress, in between filming seasons of her hit, Emmy nominated television show, the next time she’d be a comedian, that one was always Eddie’s favorite; but after all this, having her face plastered all over social media and television screens had lost some of it’s shine. 

Maybe she’d have a podcast, hell, she’d even take a radio show if people still listened to those. That way she can be funny and herself and people will  _ like her for it, _ but no one has to see her face if she doesn’t want them to.  Maybe by the time they actually get into the world she’ll be less wary of it, but for now there is something comforting about the ability to control her own anonymity while still doing what she wants to with her life. Eddie could guest star on her podcast/radio show/whatever when she wanted to and the horror story that was currently her life would be just that, a story, a bit about her shitty hometown that she had left and never looked back at.

Eddie will probably be at some fancy school in some fancy grad program, or training to be an Olympic sprinter if her mother doesn’t manage to burn out every last ounce of joy she derives from the sport before then, _or_ maybe she’ll be doing something else all together, she could literally be a Uber driver for all Richie cares, as long as it’s what she wants. Richie isn’t going to make that decision for her, she has enough of that in her life already, so fantasy Eddie, when she isn’t there to pipe in with her own input, is always sort of blurry. 

Fantasy Eddie can say she loves Richie in person though, she’s not scared to kiss her in public or hold her hand while they walk down the street because Fantasy Eddie doesn’t  _ need  _ to be.

It’s all very stupid, but it helps, and she has a feeling she’s going to need all the help she can get today.

**-**

Edith ‘Eddie’ Kaspbrak was everything her mother wanted her to be. 

Captain of the varsity track team, member of the Homecoming court three years running, and not-so-secretly predicted winner of the coveted prom queen title before that plan had gone wonky. 

She was perfect. Styled straight out of a J.Crew magazine, the president of four clubs and one honors society, Straight As since first semester freshman year. 

She was fast track to an Ivy and faster track to a raised ranch in the suburbs, two and half kids, a loveless marriage, and an perscription pill dependency by the time she turned thirty. 

It was everything Sonia Kaspbrak wanted, all pristinely planned out on laminated lists she’d written out two hours after her husband had died and pinned to the fridge when Eddie was six. 

“Don’t slouch, Edith, it’s not good for your spine.” 

“Sorry mom.” Eddie tilts herself up a little straighter, clearly not enough if how her mother huffs is any indication, but she doesn’t say anything and Eddie refocuses her attention on tugging at the waist of her skirt from where it’s bunched around her seatbelt. She hates this skirt, it’s ugly, the pattern reminds her of the horrible paisley her mother had upholstered all their living room furniture in, and the lining scratches uncomfortably against her thighs. Unfortunately Sonia still liked to lay out her clothing for her and she’d gotten almost debilitatingly afraid of disobeying her recently, terrified to slip up and tip her off on the fact that Eddie is up to something.

(That  _ something _ being both Richie Tozier and the fact that Eddie is hopelessly fucking in love with her, a thought that somehow makes her happy-stupid and terrified all at once, like she would risk everything for her, but she  _ wouldn’t shouldn’t couldn’t _ tell her mother unless you put a gun to Richie’s head and threatened to pull the trigger if she didn’t confess.)

“Oh, honey, don’t pout. Look, I know you’re still disappointed about prom, but there was nothing we could do! My hands were tied, it was cancel or let that filthy  _ dyke _ ruin everything!” Richie. Her name is fucking Richie and her mom talking about her like that makes her stomach twist around itself so tightly she isn’t sure it will ever unravel. 

She’s so completely wrong that she literally couldn’t  _ get _ any more wrong, Eddie doesn’t  _ care  _ about prom, at least not in the way everyone else seems to. 

It’s just a night where people dress pretty, boys pretend they want to be there, and inevitably two girls wear the same dress and have a fight about it; it’s a night for her mother to dress her up like a doll in a poofy pink monstrosity of a gown that she  _ hates, _ another opportunity for Sonia to live vicariously through her like she has been for Eddie’s entire life, and she's not too goddamn broken up about losing all  _ that. _

She  _ is _ broken up about the lost opportunity to see Richie dressed all fancy, to wrap her arms over her shoulders and sway to music that hasn’t been popular since her mom was in high school, to kiss her, buzzy and high on the adrenaline of everything, just like every normal couple. 

She’s broken up about how badly she knows the school day is going to go for Richie, now that prom is dead and the parents and students and the whole internet has turned into a raging dumpster fire over it. She wants to protect her from it all, wrap her up in a blanket and hide her from everyone’s judgmental glares and mean words, but she can’t. She can’t even stand next to her and support her as the universe rips into her because her mother would  _ kill _ her if she ever found out that she’s a… you know what. 

“You could have just let her come, she probably wouldn’t have done anything wrong.” She tries softly, hands no longer fiddling with the skirt but now wrapped so tightly around the fabric it’s starting to cut off the blood supply to her pinkie finger. Sonia snaps her gaze off the road and in her direction, scandalized to a level Eddie can’t even imagine reaching. She can tell, even as she looks away, by the way her mother’s fists clench around the steering wheel, flushed red but white knuckled, that she went too far.  _ Risky, so fucking risky, you absolutle idiot, she’ll know she’ll know she’ll  _ **_know_ ** _. _

“Don’t be silly, Edith.” She hisses sharply and Eddie nods too hard to try and overcompensate for the words stuck under her tongue, “Jokes like that aren’t  _ funny.” _

She forces a laugh, painful, guilty relief shattering through her whole chest as her mom takes one hand off the wheel to expertly smooth her hair in a way that doesn’t muss her too tight ponytail.

“Sorry, I was just… I was just kidding.” 

“Well, don’t.” The rest of the ride is quiet, the slightly staticy morning sermon her mother is fond of listening to droning on and on over the radio in between their awkward moments, informing Eddie brightly about all of her sins as she watches the trees blur by and attempts not to cry.

Her mom always fucks up the car line when she drops her off in the front of the school, she drives _into_ the bus lane trying to get Eddie as close as possible and then sits there, fussing and lecturing and reviewing her schedule for the day, if Eddie doesn’t intervene she sometimes even goes through her bags, one by one checking her folders for her homework due that day and dusting at the the red smeared track asphalt off the bottom of her shoes with a tissue. It’s humiliating, like she’s a baby who can’t do anything by herself while still carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. Parents honk their horns and the crossing guard waves her down angrily until Eddie finally manages to yank herself away enough to unbuckle and climb out, her mother never seems to notice that it's all very rude and embarassing and Eddie can never work up the courage to tell her.

“I’ll see you at the assembly today, sweetheart!”

“I can’t wait!”  She could, in fact, wait. She could wait until the end of time for the anti-Richie, sorry the gay girl cancelled prom, assembly. She had listened in on her as she practiced her speech last night and hearing her mother say that she’s ‘not homophobic’ really is less reassuring than it should be when she follows it up with how much she just ‘wants to maintain the word of the Lord’. 

Her friends catch her the second she gets through the door, led by an already ranting Greta Bowie, not even giving her a second to catch her breath between pretending for her mother and pretending for her classmates.

The day is what she expects it to be, because it’s what it’s been for the past  _ week. _ No one has shut up about prom, Richie, or about the homophobic bullshit they think intrinsically ties the two together.

The only difference  _ today  _ is that Richie’s back and there's the assembly and it feels like everyone who, up until now, had just been talking too loudly about it all, has finally started screaming. 

Second period Greta drags her into the library, giggling in the low, genuine way she so rarely allows herself to laugh that Eddie  _ knows _ whatevers about happens isn’t going to be good, and is almost immediatly proven right as Greta upends her half finished, large, iced caramel latte into someone’s backpack. 

Eddie had been all but dreaming about seeing her girlfriend again, after a week limited to secret texts and emails when her mother steals her phone for too long. Objectively she knew it wasn’t going to be something pretty, no matter how much she wanted it to be. School was school and kids were mean and every adult who worked at Derry High School had her mother on speed dial so she couldn’t kiss her or comfort her the way she so desperately wanted to after everything. 

That being said, even in her worst case scenarios of avoiding her in the hallways and sitting back while people bullied her, she hadn’t prepared herself to be an accomplice to the destruction of her property via her ‘best’ friend’s sticky, sickly-sweet smelling coffee. 

Richie whips around, horrified curse dying quickly into a hiss as she catches herself, wide eyes cutting between her ruined backpack to Greta, still holding the clear, one use plastic cup upside down above it, before landing on Eddie and staying there.

_ “Greta!” _ Eddie manages to choke, yanking her hand out of where it’s still gripped in the other girl’s free one, all a little too late to feel anything but preformative. 

“Oops.” She drops the cup onto the bag, it bounces off the top of it and rattles against the tile flooring, it feels deafening in the silence of the library, everyone is staring, “I tripped.”

She grins around a fake pout, embarrassingly unapologetic as Richie swears and starts to tug her ruined supplies out of her bag, squeezing her eyes shut and breathing heavily like she’s trying not to cry as she looks through the bag of notebooks and textbooks Eddie  _ knows _ she doesn’t have the funds to replace.

She feels sick.

“Greta, that’s not funny.”

“Oh,  _ come on!”  _ She turns to her and has the audacity to look  _ surprised _ at Eddie's lack of amusement, huffing when Eddie crosses her arms shakily over her chest instead of caving, “Fine. I’ll apologize when she does.”

“What did I ever fucking do to you!” Richie snaps and Eddie wants to grab her and shake her until she shuts the fuck up or uses a single ounce of critical thinking, she’s not helping herself by retaliating. 

(A guilty, well trained part of her that sounds a little too much like her mom for comfort pipes up that that has always been her problem. If she had just kept her mouth shut this whole time no one would know and prom would still go on and everything wouldn’t be perfect, but it would still be  _ fine. _ As soon as the thought comes Eddie feels disgusting for even thinking it, skin crawling as she tries to banish it completely from her mind.)

“You ruined my  _ prom.” _ Richie’s whole face crumbles and Eddie’s heart breaks, the urge to shake her shifting to the overwhelming  _ need _ to hug her right fucking now.

“I didn’t- I didn’t  _ want this! _ I just wanted to  _ go!”  _ She tries, uselessly desperate even though there is absolutely no changing Greta or any other person in this town’s mind.

“Well, we didn’t  _ want _ you there.” Richie looks to Eddie helplessly, it’s clear she hasn’t quite thought it through, a desperate grab for familiarity that Eddie has to look away from before she completely breaks down and does something stupid. The whole interaction takes less than a second but if the way Greta is grinning like a cat toying with a mouse is any indication, it wasn't short enough for her to miss it. 

“Why are you staring at her? Oh my god, do you have  _ crush _ on her, you fucking freak?” Blood rushes in Eddie’s ears, panic taking over any of her other senses so she doesn’t catch exactly what Richie splutters in defense because  _ no one can fucking know,  _ until Greta wraps and arm over her shoulder and cackles something loudly about ‘Edith Kaspbrak’ being a ‘lesbo-magnet’. 

“Shut  _ up!”  _ She manages, laughing because that's what she’s supposed to do and this is all getting far too close to reality for comfort, it comes out too forced, choked with insincerity and anxiety she’s never been too good at covering up but it gets the point across.

Maybe too well, if the hurt that flashes over Richie’s face as she shoves her sopping supplies into the main pocket of the backpack and books it out of the library is any indication.

Greta cackles, hand raised expectantly for a high five Eddie chooses to ignore. 

She’s never felt so inside and outside  _ gross. _ She liked to think she was a good person, liked to think that her and Richie had a well discussed arrangement and she understood that Eddie had to do what she had to do or else her mom might literally murder her, but this is an extenuating, undiscussed set of circumstances and it’s hard to feel like a good person when you just  _ laughed _ as your girlfriend sprinted away from you in tears.

Her phone rings with an alert from the school reminding students about the assembly and, less intentionally, reminding her that, to top all of this off, her mother is coming to school. 

This won’t even be the worst part of her day. Not by a long shot.

**-**

Richie isn’t quite sure which is worse, listening to her secret girlfriend’s mother play the victim on a podium, full out blubbering about ‘maintaining the sanctity of Derry High’s student body’ or the fact that she has an entire bleacher bench to herself and she  _ knows _ it has nothing to do with how much she reeks of old coffee, a smell that apparently permeates every available surface it comes in contact with. 

“Now, I want to make it incredibly clear, we did everything in our power to a _ void _ having to cancel prom-” The badly hushed whispers that have persisted the whole assembly start to escalate into absolute chaos that sort of just sounds to Richie like a crowd of people chanting slurs and her name and the word ‘unfair’, like any of these straight, white, trust fund babies have ever experienced enough mindless injustice to understand the word,  _ “QUIET! Quiet, everyone! _ Thank you. As I was saying, due to some  _ unfortunate _ publicity surrounding the  _ choices _ of a member of our student body, our hands are tied.”

Sonia Kasprak has a way of speaking, so obviously fake kindness with an underlying edge of condescension, that makes Richie want to tear her hair out. She’s just so very confident in her beliefs and strong in her conviction to fully invalidate every single thing about Richie that she's able to get so much deeper under her skin than any bullies could. 

She bites down hard on one of her hoodie strings and tries to remind herself that this is going to be  _ over _ in half an hour and then she can go home.

She gets the feeling that's going to be how she survives the rest of high school, head down and choking back everything she wants to say with the single, solitary reassurance that eventually this will be over, because regardless of what Stan and Patty and Principal Hanlon like to promise her, this isn’t going to blow over until she’s the somewhat proud owner of both a diploma and a plane ticket to the other side of the country. 

For now she can just bite down on her hoodie strings and wait for it to be over, don’t rock the boat, don’t make waves, it’s not exactly how she prefers to go about her day but it’s a necessary evil she can learn to live with.

“Any questions?” Sonia asks, sickly in all it’s saccharine, through-her-teeth delusion, and the student’s start up again with a fervor.

_ “I have a question!” _ Someone  _ screams _ from the entrance, it cuts through the din of frustrated teenagers and their parents with enough power that half the gym snaps their gaze from the angry PTA president to the doorway.

A beautiful woman, long red hair styled too nicely and fancy looking shoes too expensive for a shit hole high school in Maine, is standing, clearly rushed, hand made sign held aloft with more confidence than Richie thinks she has  _ ever  _ had. 

“When did discrimination become the norm?” The woman asks brightly with distinctly pretty, stylized anger, her face slipping into a smile that tells Richie she’s incredibly proud of the line she had just said despite it meaning absolutely  _ nothing. _ She spins her sign to face the crowd almost theatrically, like all of this is some big performance and not  _ precisely  _ the boat rocking, wave making behavior Richie had just fully sworn off.

**_Fighting for gay rights the Broad Way!_** is scrawled across the front of it in big block letters, the doors behind her open and three more adults, armed with their own incredibly baffling signs, follow her in, theatrical and practiced enough that it’s clear this has all been fully choreographed down to the step.

At any other time, Richie is sure she would have been delighted by four grown adults making fools of themselves by storming into a high school assembly, overdressed and overplanned, all toting absurd musical-theatre-themed gay rights posters. But right now the half of the student body that isn’t glaring at the strangers are glaring at her like she  _ caused this  _ and she gets the unsettlingly feeling that she is in the privileged position of watching a scene unfold in front of her the exact  _ second _ before shit hits the fan. 

Across the gym from where she’d been strategically placed by her mother to be as far from Richie as possible, Eddie meets her eyes with too wide ones and mouths  _ What the fuck? _

_ I don’t know _ is all Richie manages before the beautiful, ginger woman storms her way to Sonia’s little PTA approved platform, handing off her sign to a faculty member who drops it like it burned them before wrestling the microphone away from Eddie’s mother with a startling amount of grace. (A second incredibly pretty woman, round faced and awkward in a natural way that makes it seem like she doesn’t know how to really exist in her own body, scoops up the sign from the floor, holding it politely next to her own.) 

Richie momentarily considers her best escape route.

“Hello- high schoolers!” Beautiful woman calls too close to the microphone so feedback echoes through the room, she pauses before addressing them, like she can’t manage to scrounge up the five letter name of their school before deciding to forgo it entirely, “I am Audra Phillips, or @A.M.P on Instagram!” She winks too hard to the audience, no one laughs, Richie buries herself into her sweatshirt, flipping the hood up and yanking down on the strings, “You may know me for my illustrious broadway career, two tony award wins, or my hit television show  _ Melody!”  _

She pauses, like she’s waiting for applause and is then disappointed when she doesn’t receive it, but it gives Richie a moment to really start to recognize her. 

Richie’s a theatre kid, in her own right, she’s memorized enough soundtracks to shows she’ll never see and performed in enough underfunded school productions to qualify; and while Audra Phillips isn’t necessarily still  _ relevant _ it’s impossible to like musical theatre and  _ not  _ have heard about her recent broadway flop or all the controversies surrounding her being a drama queen to her coworkers. And now she’s in Richie’s school with a sign about gay rights. Fuck Fuckity Fuck  _ Fuck,  _ there is no way this is going to end in anything but disaster.

“However, there is something you all may not know about me or my friends here, Bill Denbrough,” Another, shockingly, lovely woman, brunette this time and the shortest in their group, steps forward, gripping her stunningly detailed sign like a sword and looking all too confident in whatever the fuck it is the four of them are doing.

“Beverly Marsh,” the only man in their group joins Bill and Audra at the podium, he has red hair too but it looks less like a power play on him than it does on Audra, he has the kind of smile that makes Richie think that perhaps she _understands,_ at least, what her classmates are on about with their celebrity crushes, or, she would understand if she wasn’t already filled with more dread than she knew what to do with.

“And Ben Hanscom.” The woman who picked up Audra’s abandoned sign walks forward with less pride, cheeks flushed pink like she’s unsure of how to handle herself in front of so many people, which is strange because Richie is slowly starting to at least  _ recognize _ that all of these adults are incredibly infamous broadway personalities. If anything she appreciates that at least one of them has the decency to not look so very sure of a move that Richie  _ knows _ without even hearing their plan, is going to end with her worse off than before.

Sonia makes a grab for the mic and Audra Phillips straight up clotheslines her without even missing a beat of her clearly pre written speech.

“We are not only famous actors, writers, and singers, but we are also activists!” They definitely are  _ not, _ not unless the broadway gossip columns Richie has mindlessly scrolled through in particularly boring classes had left out something _huge,_ and she is fucking terrified that this woman is about to open her mouth and let the whole town know that  _ she’s _ their activism guinea pig.

“We are here to protest the horrible treatment of  _ your _ gay student and classmate, Richie Tozier!” There it is. Shit. Richie sinks as far into her shirt as the fabric will allow, suddenly hyper aware of all the eyes that have landed on her. Part of her wants to ask her, apparently, shocked classmates exactly what the fuck else they thought these strange adults with pride signs were here for, but most of her just wants to melt into the gym floor and disappear forever. 

_ “Ms. Phillips! This is absolutely not appropriate!” _ Sonia manages to catch in the mic before it’s yanked further away from her, something unnervingly, dangerously emotional flashing across the actor’s face.

“Now in my time as a Broadway actress, I have met many,  _ many _ gay men,” Oh no. Oh no, oh no,  _ oh no. _ Laughter starts to bubble in the corner of the auditorium where some of her more perceptive classmates have clearly caught onto what's happening, “So I know what I’m talking about when I say that gay men have just as much value in the world as straight ones! Richie is just like any other boy and the fact that you are all treating him as  _ subhuman-” _ Audra keeps rattling on but Richie can’t fucking hear her over laughter that she hates more than anything but almost _has to_ understand becuase  _ Jesus Christ. _

Going by Richie had always been low hanging fruit, until recently it was just something everyone had gotten used to, but the ‘girl with a boy’s name’ teasing had started up again recently, the pinnacle of comedy in her classmates tiny, little stereotype filled minds, and this is perhaps the worst possible mistake to be made.

One of Audra Phillip’s friends, looking somewhat frantic, hissed something into her ear and her unsettlingly dazzling smile droops a little.

“Oh, I mean,  _ she  _ is just like any other _girl,_ even though she’s a lesbian. Of course, I’m sorry, the injustice of it all just overwhelmed me! But this isn’t about  _ me, _ this is about  _ Richie!” _

That is so  _ clearly _ such a bold faced lie that even the other actors look unconvinced, which isn’t promising considering the other actors seem to be the only people actually listening other than Richie. 

The parents attending the assembly are in hysterics, trying to force the four off the stage or angrily screaming into phones like whoever they’re talking to will be able to do anything about this; the students are in hysterics in a different way, those who aren’t being dragged out of the building by their mothers are laughing and filming and throwing crumpled up school supplies at the platform; even _Eddie_ clearly isn’t listening, she’s too busy avoiding her mother on her warpath and looking for Richie (everyone is looking for Richie, at Richie, _stop stop stop_ this isn’t flying under the _fucking_ radar).

Just as music starts to play from a speaker they had snuck in and, to her absolute horror, the weird Broadway people start to  _ sing _ her phone buzzes, like a goddamn angel coming to save her in the form of a nondescript contact name behind a many-times-cracked screen.

**🍝💖 (1:58 PM)-** _ meet me in br _

Getting out of the room without being noticed through the chaos is almost embarrassingly easy, even as the one person the chaos is more or less centered upon' though it's not like Miss @A.M.P on Instagram knew enough about what she looked like to find her in a crowd, she thinks, somewhat hysterically, she hadn’t even known she was a  _ girl _ .

The girls bathroom in the basement is always empty. Half the stalls are broken and it’s too close to the school resource officers office for anyone to really feel safe hiding out in there to skip class and smoke with their friends (not that they would  _ really _ get in trouble for it, but it’s safer to risk the slap on the wrist they’d get in the third floor bathrooms by the science labs where no teachers ever check). No one goes into the basement bathroom unless they’re desperate, which Richie and Eddie absolutely are, even if they’ll never admit it. Richie locks the door behind her.

She can see the uncannily pristine white toes of Eddie’s converse from under the crack of the handicap stall already when she gets in, her jacket laid across the floor below where she’s sitting, leaning nervously against her knees, because she’s always been far more concerned by the lack of sanitation in their hiding places than Richie. 

They came up with a secret knock specifically for meeting in the bathroom, not that it’s all that secret or their own creation; it’s the five knock rhythm from  _ Do you wanna build a snowman, _ which Eddie had chosen specifically because she knew the song annoyed Richie when it first came out. It’s a simple system that Richie doesn’t bother with this time, army crawling under the gap. She tells herself it’s too make Eddie laugh but it’s mostly becuase she thinks she’ll explode if she doesn’t get somewhere away from prying eyes and close to her girlfriend right fucking now. 

But, of course, if she just gets her coveted Eddie laughter and a fond  _ ‘idiot’ _ for her efforts, that is more than okay with her. 

They kiss before they even look at eachother, which Richie appreciates solely because she thinks if they  _ hadn’t _ she might just start crying and then  _ Eddie _ would start crying and that is not something either of them seem capable of handling right now.

“Hi.” She grins, forehead pressed against Eddie’s like she can smooth out how it’s creased up by sheer force of will alone.

“Hi.” Eddie grins back, trying to maintain her stubborn unhappiness and failing almost immediately. It's something they’ve both found, that being miserable together often makes it impossible to be miserable at all. 

“Do you need to be getting ready for track soon?” Richie asks, already pouting at the  _ concept _ of needing to do something  _ other  _ than be close to Eddie and maybe kissing her, right now.

“You think my mother is going to let me go to  _ track _ after that shitshow?” Eddie snorts and Richie can’t help but join her.

“Christ, I bet your mom going absolutely  _ apeshit _ looking for you right now.”

“Nah, I texted her saying I had to pee before she made me go home, she’s been on a weird UTI avoidance kick recently so there was no way she’d tell me no.” 

“Thats fucking gross.” Richie slumps against the wall next to her, wrinkling her nose and then instantly smoothing it out, laughing softly at Eddie’s clear offense that she didn’t sit closer.

“It’s not the worst obsession she’s had so I’ll take what I can get, and  _ anyway, _ my mom can go screw herself, I needed to see you.” She decisively tugs Richie half into her lap.

_ “Aw, Spaghetti, _ your mom doesn’t need to screw  _ herself, _ I’m right here-”

_ “Richiee! Shut the fuck up!” _ Eddie slams her forehead hard against Richie’s shoulder, she raises her hands in defeat, smiling so hard that it hurts. She wasn’t handling her with kid gloves like everyone else who cared about her and half the internet had been recently. It was nice. 

If she was being completely honest she had been worried about Eddie in  _ particular _ with this whole situation, she tended to be over protective when she couldn’t actually fix anything and was frustrated about it, but this is comfortable and normal and Richie could not be happier.

“I’m  _ kidding,  _ I needed to see you too.” When she really thinks about it she hasn’t actually  _ seen _ Eddie all day. 

It's not that she’s forgetting the disaster in the library, she couldn’t if she wanted to, not when everytime she inhales through her nose she’s met with the overwhelming reminder that after  _ this _ is over she still needs to ask if she can spend all of Stan’s money on a new graphing calculator and then stay up all night airing out ruined notes. But that didn’t count as seeing Eddie because that  _ wasn’t _ Eddie.

That was Edith, in all her picture perfect, Sonia Kaspbrak approved glory, and no offense to her current company, but Edith was a fucking bitch. That wasn’t exactly fair, she was the least shitty of her friends and Richie could  _ tell _ she tried to stop them when they went too far, but that was the Eddie aspect of her shining through and it hurt less to think of them as separate people.

For example, the person she’s kissing right now, is her  _ Eddie. _

By the time they break apart she’s fully in Eddie’s lap, almost certain that pressing their lips together had been a ploy from the start to get her here, though it’s not like she particularly minds, it makes it easier to flop completely against her chest and scream close mouthed into her sleeve.

“Today was shit.” She mumbles without lifting her head, Eddie’s hand comes absently to the back of her head, fingers running small, comforting, tip-tapped circles against her scalp.

“I know, baby, I’m sorry.” 

“S’not your fault.”

“It sort of is.”  _ That _ makes her look up, so fast the back of her head almost collides with the underside of Eddie’s chin. 

“Hey, no, shut up, this isn’t you’re fucking fault.” But Eddie just keeps staring at her with big sad brown eyes like she doesn’t  _ believe _ her and Richie knows and knows intimately that if she doesn’t shut this down  _ immediately _ there is going to be no fixing it.

“No! It  _ is  _ though, if I wasn’t such a  _ coward-” _

“Eds, you getting sent to conversion therapy by your physcotic bitch of mother isn’t going to help me when I get bullied.” It’s not what she meant to say, she really  _ did _ plan on easing into a much softer impact, Eddie looks like she slapped her across the face and it makes something churn guiltily in her stomach, “Look, fuck, okay, what I mean is if you  _ want _ to come out I’ll support you and I’ll make sure you’re safe but don’t beat yourself up for not being ready yet, okay? I’m a big girl, I can handle it.”

“But you shouldn’t  _ have to.” _ Richie kisses her again instead of responding, more of a  _ shut up _ than anything romantic.

“Hey, come on, one more year and then it's you, me, and California? Okay?” Eddie’s whole face scrunches, like she’s trying to see if she can salvage the argument into something closer to a win on her end, before the tension in her shoulders melts into a barely there smile and she tugs Richie into a hug.

“Yeah, okay. We’re moving to New York, though.” Richie can hear the smile in her voice, which is why she doesn’t feel bad releasing her from the hug, despite her offended squawk of protest, and flopping fully back onto the floor, legs still criss-crossed over Eddie’s.

“I am literally never going to New York ever again, Eddie, I’m sorry, but fuck that.”

“Jesus,  _ yeah, _ what the fuck was that?” She breathes, like she had forgotten up until now the absolute shitstorm they’d just experienced, Richie is almost jealous, she thinks it's going to be burned into her mind  _ forever. _

_ “I don’t know.” _

“Are they actually… famous?” Eddie trails up at the end anxiously and Richie can see her train of thought so clearly it almost makes her lightheaded. 

She knows that despite Eddie’s previous guilt, the idea of people high brow getting involved, the potential of being outed on a nationwide scale by ignorant people trying to do something charitable, is starting to drown any of that out. She gets it, really, she’s in the same boat and she’s been at the forefront of this since it started.

“They’re famous-ish, I haven’t really heard of Ben or Beverly before but Audra Phillips was in the news recently because her most recent Broadway show got shut down after it’s opening night performance.” She isn’t sure if she’s helping but Eddie snorts, reaching out to grab her hand and squeeze it hard so she is sure she can’t be doing too poorly in the comforting department.

“And the  _ other _ one?” Richie isn’t sure, but the way she says  _ the other one _ sends something warm clicking into place, like Eddie hasn’t only been worried about herself but also  _ furious, _ angry in a way only Eddie Kaspbrak can be. The kind of distinct anger that she can just turn on and off in a second, as often as she likes; and right now it’s turned on because someone had made Richie uncomfortable.

“She’s more or less infamous for writing shitty musicals and then casting herself as the lead.” 

“Anything you’d have forced me to listen to?”

_ “Shut up! _ I  _ know _ you like it, you just won’t admit it.” Eddie kicks her lightly in the side but she doesn’t argue and therefore Richie takes it as a win, reveling in the moment before belatedly answering the actual question, “Oh, um, and she wrote that one show with the rap about the Kennedy assassination.”

“Oof.” 

_ “Yeah.”  _ They both laugh but it dies out too quickly into thick, uncomfortable silence.

“You know I didn’t want any of this, right? I just wanted to fucking  _ dance _ with you.” Eddie sighs, a sound so terribly sad that Richie can barely stand it. She tilts herself up on one elbow, and Eddie offers her a crooked smile.

“I know baby, that's all I want too.” Kissing is slightly more awkward in this position for a multitude of reasons, the way Richie is still mostly on the floor and Eddie needs to lean over their tangled legs and  _ Sonia Kaspbrak slams on the door the second their lips connect. _

_ “Edith?! Edith, are you in there?”  _ Eddie yanks away so hard her shoulder rams into the toilet paper dispenser on the wall, the audible clang makes Richie wince and Sonia call her name again, just as panicked.

_ “Fuck- _ Yeah, Mama, I’ll be right out!”

_ “Unlock this door right now!” _

“Coming!” Eddie grimaces, hesitating for a moment, face still close enough that their noses are touching, and for a second Richie thinks she’s going to be risky enough to kiss her with her mother so close.  Instead she breaks away, weakly squeezing her hand again before bouncing anxiously up to the balls of her feet. She looks pointedly between Richie and the toilet, finally scrambling out of the stall with one last shaky smile once Richie’s balanced on top of it. 

_ “We’re going home, right now, young lady. What on Earth made you think just leaving was okay?” _

_ “I’m sorry, I just had to-” _ The door slams shut before Richie can hear anymore of their conversation. 

She buries her face into her hands, grinding the tops of her cheekbones into her palms to keep herself from crying. With Eddie here things had almost made sense again, it was easy to  _ actually  _ forget what was going on around her, but now that she’s gone it’s hard to ignore what an overwhelmingly depressing picture she must be painting right now; squatted shakily onto of a broken toilet lid, the heel of her left foot tilted dangerously over the water and her backpack throwing off her already shoddy balance from where it’s crammed between her and the wall, all so there was no chance her girlfriend’s mother would see any possible trace of  _ Richie _ under the wide crack of the stall door.

She wants to go home.

The bus doesn’t even go all the way out to the Uris-Blum apartment, so she needs to wait until someone can pick her up to leave, when she was in a better mood she liked to tease it was just another way for the school to show they hate lesbians, but right now all she’s wondering is how far above the speed limit she could convince Stan to go with pathetic ‘please come get me’ texts. If she called her she could probably cut the twenty five minutes it normally takes her to get from work to the school in half but Richie gets the feeling calling Stan right now would result in the same phenomena as when you’re having a bad day at school that you think your handling fine until you see your mom when you get off the bus and start bawling, which is really something she wants to avoid.

Someone enters the bathroom as she’s mulling over exactly what to do with herself, still perched awkwardly on top of the toilet, and the pathetically optimistic part of her brain perks up with the possibility of it being Eddie again. The person raps on the stall door twice, three knocks short of Eddie being back, which disappoints her far more than it should. Two more sets of feet clamber in. 

She leans awkwardly over onto one foot, trying to check a glimpse through the gap at the side of the door without letting the intruders to her incredibly public hideout see her. 

Bill Denbrough makes direct eye contact.

She loses her footing instantly, sneaker plunging into freezing toilet water as she swears, stumbling ass over tea kettle off the toilet and across the floor in her attempt to get it out.

_ “Fuck.” _ She just lets herself lay there for a minute, collapsing on the arms she’d splayed out uselessly to try and catch herself. 

“Rachel, are you in there?” Principal Hanlon asks hesitantly and she sort of grunts in confirmation, “Are you… okay?”

She sounds so entirely helpless that Richie almost wants to laugh, instead she swallows what's left of her pride and slowly pulls herself up off the floor, accidentally hitting Dr. Hanlon hard in the arm as she swings the stall door open without a warning.

Bill brightens, grinning as she strides up to Richie, standing far too close for comfort, she doesn’t seem to notice when Richie takes a wary step back. Over her shoulder, Ben Hanscom’s eyes sheepishly drift up from her dripping wet shoe, which is fair enough, before waving at her, low and close to her chest. 

They seem nice enough close up, earnest, at least, even if she thinks they might have just managed to ruin her life at this school in ten minutes far more than she’s ever been able to in seventeen _years,_ and that's saying something.

Part of her, the quickly dwindling, optimistic part, feels like she shouldn't be pushing away some of the few people she’s met in real life who are at least  _ trying to help, _ and while the much larger, much more rational part of her is aware that publicity stunts and stranger awareness are a thing, it’s hard not to feel guilty about her current plan of turning them away after just  _ looking _ at Bill; who still has the dumb, proud smile on she’s had since she walked into the gym, though it’s softer around the edges in the dim lighting of a relatively out of commission bathroom.

She supposes, caving in a way that has the little Eddie in her brain calling her a pussy, that she can at least hear them out, even though every sign thus far has pointed to that being a bad idea.

“Um, hi, I’m Richie, I don’t think we’ve really… met yet.” She sticks out her hand and Bill eagerly shakes it hard enough that her wrist pops. 

She really, _really_ should have let Stan call her out from school today.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how good this is going to be but lesbian, IT, musical theatre major brain went brrrrrr


End file.
